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6/23/11

Ride In 6/23

I can't recommend highly enough keeping your tire pressure where it should be. Nothing makes you feel like more of a lumbering oaf than uninflated tires. I mean, aside from being a lumbering oaf. I used to rely on the pumps outside of bicycle shops to inflate my tires, which was good, because it was free and it precluded my having to buy my own pump. This, however, led to me not inflating my tires frequently enough because I never wanted to stop on my way home to do so and I didn't really want to stop on my way in to do so either. Once I tried to use the free pump outside of a Georgetown bike shop and I managed to completely disinflate my front tire (because the pump was broken. This is my excuse and I'm sticking to it) and I had to walk down to another stop to reinflate it. So, if you have the space or the inclination, I think a floor pump is worth the investment.You can use a hand pump, but that's not as easy.
Soon there will be two Super Pollos within a mile from my home, one of which I will pass each day on my ride home. I have only recently discovered the wonders of charcoal chicken and while I'm sure that there are other eateries of this ilk that are superior (I'm not yet a connoisseur), I like Super Pollo just fine. Will this lead to a blog post about the best way to transport chicken parts and fried plantains by bike? Probably. The soon-to-be-open Super Pollo is in the new building with Jimmy Johns and the Sandy Spring bank. Would you put your money in a bank whose name sounds like a down-and-out Cape Cod timeshare motel? (My preferred down-and-out Cape Cod timeshare motel is Cap'n Gladcliff for what it's worth) Just saying.
Lots of traffic in some unexpected places today. For example, coming down Washington Boulevard past the Red Top lot (my preferred Arlington taxi company) and a lot of cars coming up Highland heading towards Wilson. Normally I can make my "Except Bicycles" left turn from 13th with no delay. Where was everyone going today?
Little kid in a power wheels riding up the sidewalk on Key. I think his was a truck, but I'm glad to discover that Power Wheels also come in SmartCar variations, which I believe are almost the exact size of an actual SmartCar. In case anyone is wondering if I'm going to do something like bemoan the fact that we're indoctrinating our children into a car culture from an early age and not stressing to our little kids the negative externalities associated with driving and instead equalizing the act of driving with the idea of the play of carefree youth, I wasn't planning to.
Rode behind a girl on an 80s Panasonic. Yeah, it's the same Panasonic that made your family's VCR. The more you know...
I did my best to stop at both bike lights on the Custis. And I sort of really did stop. Maybe not like 100%, but more stopped than not stopped. Compliance accomplished.
Decided to ride up Wisconsin from Whitehaven to Massachusetts. Is it much of a crime to ride through a red light if you're doing it at the exact same speed as someone jaywalking? Especially if you're riding in such a way that she's your human shield from approaching traffic leaving the British School? Is it just morally questionable, even if it's pragmatic?
Sometimes it's a good idea to wait behind the UPS instead of trying to race around it before the driver pulls forward. This might be because the UPS van is only going to move 50 feet.
On occasion, I ride in the door zone. This is especially the case when I'm riding on a major road, like Wisconsin or Massachusetts, where the speeds are fairly high and there's no bike facilities. I use the door zone, probably unsafely, as a de facto bike lane, happy to have the four feet between the parked cars and the travel lane to myself. When riding in the door zone, I spend a lot of time looking in the side mirrors to check for any occupants in the vehicles. I figure that if there's no one inside the car, the door probably won't swing open. Though, I'm sure that the technology-enabled laziness will soon make it such that remote controls will fling open doors every which way and bicyclists will have virtually no hope of ever anticipating their demise. But for now, looking in the mirror works fairly well for me and I guess it's a tip that I'm passing on to you.